


Kairos

by Kasuchi



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-05
Updated: 2009-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments that changed Barney Stinson's life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kairos

**Author's Note:**

> This is a preview for [a larger fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/982303) Consider it a prologue of sorts.

Looking back, Barney could pinpoint the exact moments that led him to now.

  1. "Barney, this is Mrs. Shaw. Can you say hello?"  
  
Peeking out from behind his mother's skirts, a little blonde head smiled shyly. "Hi."  
  
Catherine Shaw smiled and kneeled until she was at eye level with Barney. "Hey there, Barney. Would you like some cookies? I just pulled them out of the oven."  
  
Barney nodded slowly.  
  
"Wonderful! Come on in." She held out her hand. Cautiously, Barney placed his smaller fingers in hers.  
  
"I'll be back around six," Loretta added in hushed tones. "If I'm late, call me at the number I gave you, okay?"  
  
"We'll be fine, go on."  
  
Inside, Barney quietly chewed on the large cookie in his hand as he watched Mrs. Shaw place dollops of cookie dough on a baking sheet. Then, unabashedly, she licked the mixing spoon and set it in the sink. Barney laughed from his perch.  
  
"Are you laughing at me?" She placed her hands on her hips, her smile ruining the effect.  
  
Barney nodded, grinning wide.  
  
Three days later, Barney rang Mrs. Shaw's doorbell. "Hi," he said simply, smiling up at her.  
  
She ushered him inside and sat him at the table, a small snack laid out for him. "Go ahead and eat. I'll be in the living room, okay?" He nodded and reached for a Ritz cracker.  
  
A few moments later, a sound floated into the kitchen. Curious, he grabbed a handful of crackers and leaped down from the chair, padding into the living room. Mrs. Shaw sat at the piano, hands moving over the keys in wide, sweeping gestures, back and forth in a pattern. Mesmerized, he chewed while listening to her play. When she was done, shoulders relaxing and hands falling into her lap, he clapped.  
  
"That was really cool," he complemented, moving forward to see the piano up close.  
  
"Thank you, Barney." She followed the line of his gaze to the piano and smiled. "Would you like to try?"  
  
His face lit up. "Can I really?"  
  
She nodded. "Yes! How about I teach you a song?"  
  
"A song?"  
  
"C'mere." She lifted him onto the piano bench. "Okay, put out your right hand, fingers spread. Now, this song starts with these two notes here." She pointed at the E and F keys and placed his small fingers there. "All right, I'll play up here--" she pointed an octave up the keyboard--"and you'll follow me. Think you can do that?"  
  
Barney nodded solemnly, watching her carefully as she played through the first few notes of the song. Barney, a little hesitant and with no sense of rhythm, mimicked her hands.  
  
"Very good! Let's get the pattern right, okay?"  
  
And it was that way, slowly and carefully, that Barney learned how to play Chopsticks on Mrs. Shaw's old, beat-up Baldwin. 
  

  2. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," he muttered, walking away from the crowd of jeering boys.  
  
"Hey, Stinson? Think if I gave your mom twenty bucks, she'd blow me?" The crowd of hecklers burst into laughter.  
  
Barney froze, clenching a hand into a fist. "One, two, three, four, five--"  
  
"How much do you think it would cost for her to let me fu--" He didn't finish his sentence because Barney let out a cry of rage and threw a series of wild punches. The crowd's cheering changed character, moving from jeering bystanders to spectators of a fight, each one of them rooting for one of the two boys.  
  
A loud whistling noise silenced the crowd and stilled the fight. "Break it up!" Coach Larsen moved forward, and the circled students dispersed, grumbling. "Stinson. Katz. Principal's office. _Now_."  
  
They stood and dusted themselves off, then were frogmarched to the principal's office. Coach Larsen gestured that they were to sit outside while he went in and spoke first. As soon as the door closed, Spencer Katz slumped down and groaned. "Son of a bitch!"  
  
"Fuck you," Barney retorted, arms crossed against his chest and eyes staring resolutely at the ceiling.  
  
Later, as James cleaned the cut above his eye from Spencer's class ring, Barney had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes at James's mollycoddling. "Honestly, I can't believe you would do something that _stupid_. I thought you were smarter than that, Barney."  
  
"I _am_ smarter than that!"  
  
"Then why am I holding gauze to your forehead?"  
  
"Because." Barney swallowed and looked at the ground. "He called Mom a whore. Asked me how much she charged for... _stuff_."  
  
"Oh." James sat down, fingers loose around the piece of bloodied gauze. "Christ."  
  
"Yeah." For a long moment, the only sound was of the window air conditioner blowing. "I'd do it again, too."  
  
"Suspension and all?"  
  
Barney met his brother's gaze with a fierce expression. "In a heartbeat."  
  
James's gaze ran over Barney's face for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then, carefully, he reached forward and ruffled Barney's hair.
  

  3. Up until this moment, Barney had never owned a suit. He had always faked it with blazers and khakis, but he needed a suit for this interview, his first job interview since sophomore year of college.  
  
The shirt fit all right, though the collar was a little tight. The pants were a little loose, but the length was okay. The jacket, though, was hopelessly short in the sleeves, edges just barely reaching his cuffs when he stood tall and still, arms extended at his sides. The shoulders were tight, as well, and Barney could barely extend his arms. The tie, too, was short, barely reaching his navel.  
  
But the color was an absolute black. As long as kept the jacket buttoned, the tie looked fine, and so long as he didn't keep his arms folded the length issue wasn't noticeable.  
  
He turned and surveyed himself in the mirror. Eyeing himself critically, he grinned and gave his jacket lapels a good tug. "I look _awesome_."
  

  4. "Did it hurt?"  
  
The woman he'd approached shot him a puzzled look. "Did what hurt?"  
  
"The fall."  
  
"What fall?"  
  
"From heaven, 'cause you're definitely an angel."  
  
The woman stared at him flatly.  
  
Barney winced. "Okay, that was a really bad pick-up line. I'm sorry."  
  
She stirred her drink nunplussed. "Apology accepted."  
  
"Can we start over?" Barney made a rewinding noise and took a step or two back. She hid a smile behind her glass. "Hi, my name's Barney."  
  
"Zanessa."  
  
"Seriously?"  
  
She glared.  
  
Barney held up his hands. "No, I mean, it's very pretty. Suits you."  
  
"Oh." She beamed. "Thank you." She turned away from the bar and crossed her legs. "So, uh, where are you from?"  
  
He slid into the seat across from her and chatted with this woman whose name he couldn't believe existed. They moved from topic to topic, and he told her bad jokes until she couldn't breathe for the giggles.  
  
And, at the end of the night, she invited him up to her apartment and he followed after her, placing sloppy-drunk kisses along her arm. In the morning, he walked out of her apartment, suit rumpled, hailed a cab, and calmly went back to his place, where he showered and made a pot of coffee.  
  
Her name was Zanessa. She was his first bimbo.
  

  5. One evening, Robin walked into McLaren's, smiling broadly. It could have been any hundreds of other nights. There was nothing special about that particular day.  
  
Except. Barney couldn't seem to stop watching her as she fell into the booth and proceeded to tell the others about her crazy day at work. He kept sneaking glances her way over the rim of his glass or under the pretense of paying attention to her, eyes darting away any time she nearly caught him. More than once, he saw her expression darken before returning her attention to someone else.  
  
Later, when Ted and Marshall and Lily had vacated the booth and it was just him and Robin and their glasses of good liquor, Robin confronted him.  
  
"You've been watching me creepily all night. Creeper." She smiled as she sipped from her lowball glass.  
  
"I have not," he replied indignantly.  
  
She raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Okay, maybe I have been watching you," he admitted. "But not creepily!"  
  
"Then why do you keep looking at me?"  
  
Barney stared down into his glass and muttered something.  
  
"Out with it, _Swarley_."  
  
He winced. "If I tell you, will you never call me that again?"  
  
"Maybe."  
  
With a sigh, he met her curious gaze. "I'm seeing you for the first time."  
  
Robin's brow furrowed. "You see me every day."  
  
"Exactly," he replied, and drained the rest of his glass in one swallow, setting it on the table with a dull _clunk_. "Tonight's on me. See you tomorrow." He threw down some bills on the table and walked out of the bar, hands stuffed in his pockets.



  
Well, those and getting _hit by a bus_ , but that went without saying.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. "Kairos" means the right or opportune moment. The Greeks differentiated between chronos (natural chronology) and kairos. For more information, see the [wiki article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos). It's actually pretty interesting.


End file.
